Engagingly written and packed with illustrations, Early Ireland, seeks to introduce the general reader to the riches of Irish prehistory--a span of eight thousand years from the end of the Ice Age to the first centuries of the Christian era. It provides a clear account of the development of Irish society from its beginnings as a postglacial culture of hunters and gatherers, through the glory of its golden age in the second millennium BC, to the technological advances stimulated by the discovery of iron and, in the last centuries BC, the development of a Celtic art style of unrivalled power and individuality.